


A Look Back

by becameapasttime (mitslits)



Series: For Want of Control [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, credence origin story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8934646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitslits/pseuds/becameapasttime
Summary: Credence wasn't always a slave to the Obscurus. Once, he was a simple child. Once, he was normal.





	1. The Beginning of the End

“Help me,” Credence pleads, doubled over in front of Graves. His pulse is pounding, blood rushing in his ears as he struggles to come down from the hate-filled high. 

“Help me.” _Hit me._

“Please, help me.” _Hurt me._

Graves obliges. 

-

Credence hasn’t always been this way. He can remember a time when things were normal, when _he_ was normal. Or at least as normal as a wizard living in America could be.

Then his life fractured into pieces, bit by bit, fault lines at the edges blossoming into ever-widening cracks that brought it tumbling down around his ears.

Credence knew something was wrong when his parents stopped speaking in honeyed words. He was only a child, too small to understand what his father’s late nights and secret meetings meant, why his mother’s cheeks were painted with tear tracks. Comfort was something that came naturally to him. He’d crawl into her lap and wrap his arms around her neck, content to sit there until she saw fit to move.

But things could never be as simple as that. 

Aurors descended upon his father, dragging him out of their small apartment. 

Credence remembers only flashes of his father’s trials. 

_“You stand accused of intimate relations with a nomaj. How do you plea?”  
_

_“We find you to be guilty.”  
_

_“Take his wand. Bind his hands. Strip him of his magic.”_

Credence had never feared who he was before. But he couldn’t comprehend what his father had done, why MACUSA would have wanted to take his magic away. Was that what his own future held? 

Dread settling low in his stomach, Credence vowed to seal away that part of himself. It remained locked away like his father, like Credence never would be. After all, he was all his mother had now. 

He can’t remember exactly when the Obscurus took hold. Can’t think of a turning point, an event that shook it from its slumber and brought it roaring to wakefulness inside of him. 

The aftermath he remembers in detail. 

_crawling to his mother  
_

_still, so, so still_

_face cracked and stained with black  
_

_mask of terror frozen in place  
_

_his fault, his fault, his fault_

Credence hunches over his mother’s body, tears rolling down his face and onto hers and he can almost believe she’s weeping for him. She’d been at him all day, insisting he help her around the house, leave his toys alone, and he’d gotten so _angry_...

It takes hours for him to move from her side. He doesn’t have anywhere to go, wanders aimlessly along the streets until he hears the ringing of a bell.

Its source turns out to be a woman around his mother’s age, standing on the doorstep of a decrepit old house. A line of children extends out from it and he joins them, a dull sort of curiosity pulsing through his veins. He’s barely made it through the door when a pamphlet is shoved into his hands. It confirms everything he’s ever feared. 

He’s sick. Twisted. Wrong. Magic brings only misery.  

Credence only realizes he’s trembling when the woman with the bell kneels in front of him, eyes narrowed. 

“What is it, child?” she asks, voice firm and unyielding. 

Credence opens his mouth to speak but finds himself without words. He snaps it shut quickly before a confession can come spilling out. But the woman is still waiting for an answer. Silently, he points to the picture printed on the pamphlet, two hands snapping a wand, and says the only words that still hold meaning for him. “My mother.” It comes out as barely more than a whisper. 

The woman’s face pales and she wraps steel-cold fingers around his wrist. “You aren’t to tell anyone about this, do you understand?” she hisses. “ _Understand?_ ”

Credence looks at her with terror-filled eyes and nods. And so does his new life begin.


	2. The End of the Beginning

Credence takes the name of Barebone, though Mary Lou is not his mother (as she is so fond of reminding him). It becomes his identity, a part of him to replace the magic he can’t reveal he has. He can feel it lurking inside him, waiting, wanting to be released, but he holds it back at every turn. 

It rots further within him, the Obscurus beginning to take on a life of its own. It claims Credence for its own, spreading through every fiber of his being, and sometimes it strikes. 

At first, Credence doesn’t recognize the feeling. He’ll get angry and it will build and build and build until it explodes into something unrecognizable, a whole new being using Credence’s power. He never _chooses_ to come back to himself. He's forced to wait until the hatred has run its course before it leaves him where it will, pale and trembling and far from home. 

Credence comes to know it intimately. He can read the signs, the tightness in his chest, white pushing at the edge of his vision. Then black. Black and a rush of power so strong it sweeps him off his feet and hurls him recklessly through the city, leaving only destruction in his wake. 

And he just. Can’t. _Stop it._

Mary Lou regards him with suspicion, ever mistrustful of him, ever watchful. She quells the storms of rage before they can happen, bearing down on Credence with such harshness that he can’t summon the energy to be angry with her. 

Until. Until she raises a hand to one of his sisters, until her fingers leave marks on the small girl’s pale skin. 

Credence can feel the Obscurus shake itself awake, thread itself into his heartbeat, and start to take over. Panic rises in tandem with his hatred. Not here. He can’t turn here. If he kills mother, he kills them all. 

Credence forces himself to move, racing upstairs and hiding himself away in his small room. He wedges a rickety chair under the doorknob, knowing it won’t be enough, but it’s all he has. 

The edges of his body blur, white-stained eyes wide with panic. Credence catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror out of the corner of his eye. 

Mary Lou’s words ring in his ears. 

_Unnatural. Vile. Monster._

Credence clamps his hands over his ears and tries to hold himself together through sheer force of will. It’s no use. The words circle around and around his mind, the shifting figure he sees reflected back at him only a confirmation of their truth. With a hoarse shout, he lashes out, fist thudding into the smudged glass. 

His knuckles split at the impact and his outline pulls back together. Pain lances up his arm and Credence feels the Obscurus’ grip on him slip, just the slightest bit. 

Without stopping to think, Credence drops to his knees among the shards of broken glass. He wraps his hands around the largest pieces, their edges slicing mercilessly into his skin. Blood seeps through his fingers, crimson-bright, and a ward against the darkness within him. 

The Obscurus recoils. It recedes back into the recesses of his mind and leaves Credence as he is: a small, broken boy with scarring palms and a need he’s only just beginning to understand.


End file.
